Towards a formal definition of contradiction in inventive design

For nearly two decades, TRIZ has appeared as a set of methodological tools useful for supporting inventive aims in industry. The central aspect of a process based on TRIZ invariably involves the formulation of a contradiction, although there has been very little research conducted about the formalization of this notion. Our paper proposes a formal definition of the contradiction and of its potential manipulations useful in inventive design in accordance to the fundamentals of TRIZ. This formalization is particularly important when software tools are needed to implement TRIZ in industry. This work is also necessary at a moment where perceptions associated with the TRIZ point of view about contradictions diverge away from what made TRIZ original and relevant in the innovation area.

► We propose a formal contradiction model applicable to inventive design.
► We compare this formal model with other approaches, mainly, the numerical ones.
► We present a real industrial case with an application of a software tool that has been developed by our team. The formalization presented in this article is at the base of this software tool.